When I moved to Tennessee back in 2005 I got a real bug to grow English Garden Roses in a "formal" rose garden. I love the beautiful blooms and the fragrance is just incredible. They make wonderful cut flowers. I have since taken this rose garden down. The one thing I learned is that these roses grow VERY well here in Eastern Tennessee and can really become huge. Having 30 or so plants required a large amount of work to keep them under control and looking good. The battle with the Japanese Beetle was constant just to stay even. The fragrance of the roses seem to make them more attracted to the blooms. My wife and I decided that our age we needed to shift gears a bit and plant a garden that was less demanding and hence we switched it over to more of a cottage garden. The show that these roses put on is nothing short of magnificent. Looking at these photos from just 3 summers ago has sort of ignited the fire again. A think a couple of Abraham Darby's would fit in nicely in the cottage garden. All of these roses are David Austin.

Such a beautiful scene! I'm so sorry that you had to give these up. They look so healthy and happy in the photos, but I understand the need to scale down on time-consuming chores as we age. I agree that Austins fit perfectly into a cottage garden. I hope that adding a couple of them won't create too many problems with the beetles. Can you grow pelargoniums in your zone? I've heard reports that they're toxic to Japanese beetles. I'm afraid I don't know much about that. I didn't look into the details of these reports because we don't have Japanese beetles here.

So beautiful! Is that the Chickamauga in the background? You live in plant paradise. How many of the roses did you keep? We are also scaling back, and the Austin roses are staying. Part of my scaling back effort was the decision to accept less than perfection and not work quite so hard growing plants that really didn't belong in my harsh climate. If I ever get to move to Tennessee, the Austins will come with me!

Thanks. Yes that is Chickamauga in the background. Most things grow pretty well here. When I took out the rose garden I took them all out because they were SO big. I am like you when it comes to perfection and to keep those roses at their best, especially with the Japanese beetles, it was a little more than we could do. I was very hesitant to do any chemical treatment for the beetles because I did not want runoff to get into the lake. From what I have heard very few chemical actually work on them anyway.

Now *that* is why I'm striving to attain my yard to look like! That's what I really regret about living here in Colorado.. this is definitely NOT a plant paradise. And I'd put up with the Japanese beetles if I could grow that sort of beauty!

Well I am sure you will be successful Skiekitty. We did a major soil improvement in this garden with the addition of good soil, "Black Gold" mushroom compost mixture, forest compost and top soil. I do believe that a plant tag would grow and prosper in there.

Dave - heheheh, I know about planting Cheerios & growing a donut tree! I moved here from northern NY, where it *was* possible! Here's it's not my soil that's the problem, it's the short growing time. But you have ice storms there.

We do have a nice long growing season but it can get cold with freezing rain and the occasional snow. It's hard to characterize winter's here as cold after spending 25 years in Chicago but we can go through periods where the temps dip to the teens and on the rare occasion into the single digits. It's the early springtime frost after buds form that cause us the most difficulty especially with hydrangea blooms and Japanese Maple trees.